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Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges

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Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges |Notes of Interest

Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges at Yale University, built in 1962, were among the last works undertaken by Eero Saarinen. This project is the final phase in Yale’s campaign to renovate its twelve residential colleges. There are three major aspects to the renewal: additional student life and activity space to draw Morse and Stiles into parity with the other colleges; reconfiguration of the prevailing courtyard hardscapes into a sustainable landscape dominated by water and greenery; and transformation of the student housing mix from stand-alone single rooms into suites.

Courtyards were modified for recreation, with site walls added to terrace the court and negotiate the grade down to the main entry and dining hall. Wooden terraces extend from each dining hall, with new rain-fed water features. The original libraries and dining halls are fully renovated. Saarinen’s original below-grade common rooms are enlarged and provided with natural illumination through skylights cut into the original ceiling.

A 25,000-square-foot underground addition inserted beneath the crescent courtyard integrates with the original structures. It continues the landscape into, under, and through the architecture, culminating in a sunken courtyard that fills the addition with daylight. A new steel and wood bridge traverses the sunken courtyard on the passageway between the colleges, and concrete underpinnings flanking the addition are expressed in new and old furniture-like blocks.

The work here is surgical, strategic, and subtle and about judgment: what to retain, repair, or restore; what to develop anew. It forms a dialogue of material respect and admiration between old form and new purpose—simultaneous histories making each other richer and better.

Additional Credit

Code Consultant: Bruce J. Spiewak, AIA, Consulting Architect, LLC

Commissioning Agent: BVH Integrated Services

Construction Manager for Construction: Turner Construction Co.

Construction Manager for Preconstruction: The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company